A Canadian pedophile, who tried to commit suicide by slicing open his belly with a pocketknife as police in Cambodia moved in to arrest him, was ordered to serve seven years in prison and pay compensation to four young boys he molested.

Pierre Deslauriers, 72, of Montreal, was arrested in a dramatic raid in 2014 in Siem Reap, the tourist gateway to Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat temples: confronted for having paid young boys for sex, he locked himself in his cheap hotel room and slashed his wrists and belly before police broke in and wrestled away his knife.

He was taken to hospital by ambulance, where he was formally charged with sexually molesting four boys aged 10 to 14, by Siem Reap’s anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection police.

Deslauriers was convicted later that year but launched an appeal.

On Wednesday, the appeals court in Phnom Penh upheld his sentence of seven years imprisonment and a payment of 10 million Riel (about C$3,230) compensation to his victims under Cambodia’s Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation act.

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It was the minimum sentence he could face, with the trial judge citing his age and lack of physical injury to the victims, who were initially paid just $1 for sex acts, with two of them being told to clean up his hotel room first, court heard.

Deslauriers is also to be deported back to Canada after serving his sentence and is banned from returning to the country for an additional 10 years.

Him Sophorn, a court support worker with Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), a non-governmental organization that combats sexual abuse of children in Cambodia, worked directly with the victims in the case.

“Child victims of sexual abuse and exploitation really need long time and much support towards their recovery,” Sophorn said. “However, the child victims in this case have been in a recovering process since 2014.”

Deslauriers, once a professional photographer, had gained notoriety in Quebec for pro-pedophilia advocacy and sexually exploiting children.

In the 1990s, Deslauriers admitted having pedophilic tendencies after repeated police intervention, including indecent exposure in the 1960s and sexual assault in the 1980s. In 1994, according to press clippings from the time, Deslauriers pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault on two very young girls, incitement of a child to sexual touching and possession of child pornography.

Deslauriers had met and befriended two girls — just 3 and 5 years old — and their family in a Montreal park. He offered them gifts and then convinced them to pose for photographs at his photo studio. The photo shoot included sexually suggestive poses. During the session the girls were sexually touched. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Court heard of his deviant lifestyle, how he had first fallen in love with a six-year-old girl when he was 16 years old. In the 1970s, he bought child porn magazines while he travelled in Europe, a taste for which he retained.

At the time, Quebec prosecutors said he showed no remorse for his actions, evidenced by his own words when he told court child sex would be considered normal in the future.

La Presse reported that Deslauriers had delivered a pro-pedophilia presentation at a sexuality symposium at a Montreal college in the 1990s.

La Presse reported that Deslauriers had delivered a pro-pedophilia presentation at a sexuality symposium at a Montreal junior college in the 1990s.

In the Cambodia incident, Deslauriers traveled to an area notorious for child-sex tourism and rented a low-rate room rather than the better hotels preferred by foreign tourists.

Workers with APLE were tipped to a suspicious tourist and its workers spoke with two boys who confirmed sexual abuse, said Yi Moden, APLE’s deputy director of field operations, at the time.

Children in the area said Deslauriers had been hanging around the area for about eight days prior to his arrest.

Finding the suspect, APLE workers saw him taking four other boys into the forest, where he disappeared from view. Police were called but by the time officers arrived, the suspect had left the area.

The boys, ages 10, 12, 13 and 14, were taken to a police station where they were questioned; three of them told officers of sex abuse. More victims were suspected.

Poverty and lax enforcement made Cambodia a destination for child sex tourists. Even when caught, foreign pedophiles were often able to pay a small amount to a victim’s family — or a bribe to officials — to escape charges, but, in recent years, Cambodia has made ending child sexual exploitation a priority.

As part of the crackdown, the Cambodian government has called on hotel employees and non-governmental agencies to report suspicious activity. It has brought several high-profile successes with prosecutions against several Western tourists.

Cambodia was one of several countries where predator Christopher Neil, a former English teacher from British Columbia, molested children in the notorious “Swirl Face” case.

Neil tried to hide his identity in photos of him in the act of child sex abuse by digitally swirling his face. Police re-manipulated the digital photos and caught him in Thailand. He returned to Canada in 2012 after five years in a Thai prison.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia — For decades, archeologists here kept their eyes on the ground as they tramped through thick jungle, rice paddies and buffalo grazing fields, emerald green and soft with mud during the monsoon season.

They spent entire careers trying to spot mounds or depressions in the earth that would allow them to map even small parts of Angkor, the urban centre at the heart of the Khmer empire, which covered a vast region of what is now Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos from roughly 802 to 1431. In modern times, little material evidence existed beyond a network of monumental stone temples, including the famed Angkor Wat, and the sprawling settlements that presumably fanned out around the temples long since swallowed up by the jungle.

But this year, archeologists Shaun Mackey and Kong Leaksmy were armed with a portable GPS device containing data from an aerial survey of the area that is changing the way Angkor is studied. The device led them straight to a field littered with clods of earth and shot through with tractor marks. It looked to the naked eye like an ordinary patch of dirt, but the aerial data had identified it as a site of interest, a mounded embankment where the ancestors of today’s Cambodians might have altered the landscape to build homes.

Almost immediately after stepping onto the field, Mackey, his eyes glued to the ground, pounced on a shard of celadon pottery. Soon the team had turned up a small trove of potsherds and began taking copious notes.

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“It’s not sexy, like a temple, but for an archeologist it’s really interesting that we have this representation of cultural activity,” he said. He and Kong Leaksmy are part of a consortium of scholars called the Cambodian Archeological Lidar Initiative, or CALI, which uses a technology known as lidar to shoot ultraquick pulses of light at the ground from lasers mounted on helicopters. The way they bounce back can show the presence of subtle gradations in the landscape, indicating places where past civilizations altered their environment, even if buried beneath thick vegetation or other obstructions.

The soft-spoken, fedora-clad Mackey, a 14-year veteran of fieldwork here, noted that before lidar’s availability, an accurate ground survey of archeological features in the Cambodian landscape entailed years or even decades of work.

“We’ve all spent hours getting clawed and shredded by bamboo forests with thorns or dense scrub and bush, in the hope that we might find something,” Mackey said.

CALI’s helicopters flew for 86 hours in March and April 2015 over 1,910 square kilometres with Buddhist monks blessing the lidar sensors before takeoff. The data generated during the flights, based on roughly 40 billion individual measurements, is being verified and made public.

“We had hit a roadblock in terms of technology until recently,” said Damian Evans, the archeologist who heads the initiative. “The vegetation was obscuring these parts of Angkor and other monumental sites. The lidar allowed us to see through the vegetation.”

The result, Evans said, has been an unprecedented new understanding of what the Khmer empire looked like at the apex of its power, with lidar-generated maps revealing an intricate urban landscape stretching across several provinces of modern-day Cambodia, along with a sophisticated network of canals, earthworks and dams the Angkorians used to control the flow of water.

“It is pretty amazing,” he said. “The larger the temples are, the larger the urban infrastructure around it is likely to be, so they weren’t lost, in the sense that we assumed that they must be there. But, of course, that is an entirely different thing from being able to see it in incredible detail and how it works and how it functioned, how it evolved, the morphology of these places.”

The group is using the maps to make more targeted excursions into the field, “ground-truthing” the lidar data to ensure that it is accurate and to determine where digging might be useful. On a recent mission, Mackey barreled down a freshly paved road in a pickup truck driven by Kong Leaksmy.

Although the Khmer empire’s great stone monuments have endured for centuries, spawning a US$60-million-a-year tourism industry and preserving information about the dynasty of god-kings who ordered their construction, the stuff of everyday life at Angkor, made from wood, mud, thatch and brick, has long since rotted away in the hot and humid climate. Almost nothing has been known about the lives of those who built the temples and served its rulers — who they were, how they lived, what they believed.

David Chandler, a professor emeritus at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a leading historian of Cambodia, said the new lidar data was particularly exciting because it was providing more information than ever about how ordinary people lived in the Khmer empire.

Historians had assumed that the residents of Angkor existed — “these temples certainly didn’t get built by themselves,” Chandler said — and they had cobbled together some understanding of the area’s population through inscriptions, notes from a Chinese diplomat who visited Angkor, and a few other sparse clues. Chandler compares the process to trying to understand American history from a small collection of obituaries and Fourth of July speeches.

But with lidar-made maps, people who had spent their lives trying to retrace Angkorian history could actually see for the first time an intricate network of houses, gridded streets, canals, bridges and even mud-and-brick palaces.

“People imagined it was a city, but they didn’t know how to imagine it, because they didn’t know what it looked like, Chandler said. “Now they do.”

“This is where Angkorian research is going to go from now on: research into the people who built the temples, not the people whom it was built for,” he added. “It’s putting the population of the city back in view.”

Damian Evans/French Institute of Asian Studies in Paris via APBuddhist monks prepare for a blessing ceremony next to a helicopter carrying lidar equipment that gave researchers an aerial view of the ancient Angkor empire.

The Greater Angkor Project, a team from the University of Sydney in Australia, has been trying since 2010 to identify and excavate ancient mounds believed to have been households in the Angkor Wat compound. When the team started its research, it spent months simply trying to identify where all the mounds were. But after it received preliminary lidar data in 2012, it realized immediately that the mounds were arranged in a tight grid pattern, indicating houses lined along roads, as in a modern city.

“Lidar made everything new and exciting,” said Heng Phipal, a Cambodian archeologist who worked with the project.

Since then, members of the project have used lidar to target areas for deeper excavation, unearthing sandstone from the temples that might have been recycled into floors for city dwellers, and analyzing a garbage dump on the Angkor Wat grounds full of burned food remains and broken ceramics. They have found some of the first evidence of what Angkorians ate (rice and pomelo fruit) and how they cooked (in earth pots over fires). And they have come to understand that the gridlike pattern inside Angkor is just part of a much larger urban agglomeration, challenging conventional wisdom that the temple cities were discrete and self-contained.

“Previous maps only show us different temples — they look like different units, where settlements around them seem to be concentrated around these temples — but with lidar we know that is not actually the case,” Heng Philpal said. “We know it was all inhabited, and the city is larger than expected.”

Being able to see the true scope of the city has led to discoveries in other areas, too. Lidar has helped find the giant quarry field where most of the sandstone to build the temples was taken from, and has identified mysterious earthen spirals close to Angkor Wat and a few other temples that might have served aesthetic or religious purposes.

At a remote but massive temple called Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, which Khmer King Jayavarman VII used as a base to raise an army against invaders from the east, scholars had worked for more than a decade to determine what lay below the surface, with little success. They ultimately concluded that the area was not thickly settled. But the lidar data revealed a dense cityscape that even included the same spirals seen at Angkor Wat, and helped pinpoint areas for archeologists to dig that had not been looted.

In other cases, what lidar has not found is just as revealing. At the temple Banteay Chhmar, on the Thai border, archeologists had also struggled to find evidence of settlement. The lidar data confirmed this, leading Evans to conclude that it was not the centre of a city but perhaps a temple or a garrison that saw only waves of temporary settlement.

Perhaps most crucially, the long-held narrative of the collapse of Angkor is being recast by lidar evidence. Based on stone inscriptions in the temples, scholars have long believed the empire fell in 1431 after its capital was sacked by an invading Thai army, and the population of the city moved closer to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s current capital.

But when these areas were scanned, there was no evidence of an influx of refugees. This suggests that while there might have been a political schism in 1431 that induced members of the royal family to move closer to Phnom Penh, the vast majority of people stayed near Angkor and only gradually moved away.

This understanding is unfolding day by day as the research continues. At Site 305, for example, Mackey and Kong Leaksmy uncovered bits of water jars, showing that the area included households, and shards of blue-and-white Chinese tradeware dating from after the 1400s.

“When myth becomes such entrenched history, archeology is a way of challenging the written record, particularly because history is often written by the powerful who give voice to their own agendas,” he said. “But the material remains.”

To Kong Leaksmy, a recent university graduate who used lidar data to write her thesis on a small temple called Banteay Sra, the takeaway was simpler.

“I can see many, many points that I cannot see just by eye,” she said of the new tool. “It’s amazing for me.”

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Visitors who dress immodestly will not be allowed to enter Cambodia’s famed Angkor temple complex, the agency that oversees the site said Thursday.

Long Kosal, a spokesman for Apsara Authority, which oversees the archeological complex, said that beginning Aug. 4, local and foreign tourists will be required to wear pants or skirts below the knees and shirts that cover their shoulders. Those not dressed appropriately will be required to change their clothes before being allowed to enter the temple site in northwestern Cambodia.

Long Kosal said the ban was implemented because “Wearing revealing clothes disrespects the temple’s sanctity.”

He said that his organization had advised tour agencies, hotels and airport officials last December that all foreign visitors should be aware of what type of clothes they should wear when they visit.

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Illustrations of what is considered inappropriate clothing and behaviour are being posted on the organization’s website, an English version of which is still under construction.

Angkor Wat, the spiritual centre of the Khmer empire that dominated the region from the 9th to 15th centuries, is Cambodia’s biggest tourist attraction, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a symbol of national pride that is emblazoned on the Cambodian flag. About 2.1 million foreign tourists visited last year.

Immodest dress is not the worst breach of modesty the temples have suffered. Early last year there was a small spate of Western tourists who posed naked for snapshots, and those who were caught were fined and deported.

Cities buried beneath the jungle ground — it sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones film.

Yet Australian archaeologist Damian Evans has spent the past several years searching for them in the dense jungleland near Angkor Wat in Cambodia. During a phone interview early Monday morning, Evans told The Washington Post he and his team have mapped out more than 1180 square kilometres of land, including “basically every modern temple complex in the entire country to some degree.”

The findings offer new insight not only into the Khmer Empire, which reigned in what is now called Cambodia from around the 9th to the 15th centuries, but into the populations that lived in the area long before then.

Most dramatic among the findings is an entire medieval city for which Evans and his team had searched for almost ten years before concluding it didn’t exist.

Evans also said this mapping proves, maybe for the first time, that human beings have terraformed the earth by diverting rivers and cutting down forests for thousands of years, since well before we had written records.

“The broad conclusion to draw from this is that we’ve underestimated how much humans have shaped their environments,” Evans said.

They’ll be presenting the findings in a paper set for release in the Journal of Archaeological Science and in a presentation Monday at the Royal Geographic Society in London.

Damian Evans / Twitter

The technology that made them possible would have made Indiana Jones’s job a lot easier, albeit less swashbuckling. Previously, archaeologists would have been forced to do this sort of topological mapping on foot, a slow and burdensome process, particularly in dense jungles like those of Cambodia. But advancements made in lidar — which stands for light detection and ranging — a have made it possible to perform this sort of research from the air.

The technology was actually created in the 1960s, just after the laser was invented. It works a little like radar, which uses radio waves to find foreign objects. To put it simplistically, if a wave bounces back, then you know something is there. Lidar does the same, only it uses pulses of light, or lasers, to detect objects. It’s the same technology police use when hunting down speeding cars on the interstate.

But at its inception, lidar could only shoot about 2,000 pulses per second, which rendered it fairly useless for the sort of work Evans and his team do. At those levels, most of the pulses would merely bounce off treetops and the dense blanket of leaves under them, offering little to no insight as to what lay below. Modern lidar, though, can fire up to 600,000 shots per second. At that rate, enough lasers make it through the vegetation to offer information on what is underneath.

What is underneath is often enough to draw conclusions as to what was once there. Much of the Khmer world was built with biodegradable materials like wood and thatch which have long decayed, according to the paper, but topography points to what structures once existed. Wooden houses, for example, were built on mounds of earth designed to keep them above water during flood season, and lidar will detect those mounds.

Evans said mapping the topology by helicopter using the technology is is just as effective as performing the work by hand — and far, far quicker.

“There was a French team that had been working in the central Angkor areas and they covered 9 square kilometers the old-fashioned way,” Evans said, meaning they used machetes to cut through the vegetation and shovels to reach the trace materials that indicated where a canal or a roadway might have been. It took that team many years to map those 9 kilometers, which Evans said his team was able to do with the same accuracy in a mere one to two hours using lidar.

He also said that given how quickly urbanization is taking place in Cambodia and elsewhere, it’s likely this large-scale mapping might never have occurred without the technology. Modern urbanization may have destroyed the topography.

In 2013, he wrote, “Now, for the first time in my 16-year career, there is no ‘next big thing’ – lidar is it. We have arrived.”

He continued: “The fact is that the transformative power of lidar lies quite simply in its unparalleled ability to ‘see through’ the vegetation that has previously obscured the traces of early civilizations that remain etched into the surface of the landscape. In many places, what we had before was a collection of temples that were just dots on a map, because the wooden cities that once surrounded them decayed centuries ago. Now what we have are entire urban landscapes mapped in elaborate detail. Imagine having a map of a European city consisting only of the locations of churches, compared to having a complete street map of the same city, and you get an idea of what an extraordinary leap forward this is for those of us interested in the history of lived-in spaces.”

That’s leap forward for Evans came last March and April, while Evans was leading the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative, which was funded by a 1.5 million Euro grant from the European Research Council, according to a press release.

The reactions from the people in the room are not printable in a newspaper

The results are expansive, and not all are published in the journal article. In fact, the press release states, “The coming weeks and months will see the publication of a number of reports, articles and peer-reviewed publications deriving from the 2015 archaeological lidar campaign in Cambodia.”

Perhaps the most striking thing to happen is the discovery of a city no one could find at Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, a large religious complex about 97 kilometres east of Angkor. Evans and his team sought the city for ten years, finally concluding that it didn’t exist. Until one day, as if someone had turned on a flashlight in a dark room, it appeared on the computer screen, after being mapped by lidar.

“We had spent a decade on the ground . . . looking for city that we figured must be around somewhere . . . surrounding this temple,” Evans said. “All of a sudden, the city has more or less instantly appeared on the screen in front of us. It had been hiding in plain sight. A city that we figured wasn’t there just appeared.”

Added Evans, “Usually the reactions from the people in the room are not printable in a newspaper, but it’s quite a thing to behold.”

Damian Evans via Associated PressBuddhist monks prepare for a traditional blessing ceremony next to the helicopter and lidar instrument.

This isn’t the first time Evans himself has used lidar to map a city that was mostly covered in dense vegetation. In 2012, he and his team used it to map parts of Mahendraparvata, which many — to Evans’ chagrin — called a “lost city.” He explained in The Diplomat that it was never “lost” — indeed, “a century or more of prior scholarship” hinted that it was there — but it was also unseen.

Now, it’s not just seen; it’s almost entirely mapped. This new survey, which focused on a much larger area, found the full expanses of Mahendraparvata to be potentially even larger than Phnom Penh, the capital of and largest city in Cambodia.

At present, much of the data is fairly raw — scholars will be able to study it and draw insight and conclusions from the topography, and some already have. For example, Evans told The Guardian, “Our coverage of the post-Angkorian capitals also provides some fascinating new insights on the ‘collapse’ of Angkor. There’s an idea that somehow the Thais invaded and everyone fled down south – that didn’t happen, there are no cities (revealed by the aerial survey) that they fled to. It calls into question the whole notion of an Angkorian collapse.”

In a broader scale, the data could teach us about the advent of some human technology. For example, elaborate water management systems — the usage of dams to divert rivers and the construction of waterways as a means of irrigation — in the area were previously thought to be confined mainly to Angkor, which means the practice of using them would have started in the 9th century. But, according to the journal article, it might have been a “common characteristic” of the area dating back to around the 5th century. As the paper stated, “this is usually thought to be an Angkor period innovation, but here we have an example of a very sophisticated urban water management system potentially dating from several hundred years earlier.”

Finally, the study found “unexplained, geometric linear patterns” across Cambodia, which were also previously also thought to be unique to Angkor Wat.

“We still don’t really understand what they are,” Evans told the Guardian. “They could have been gardens of some kind. But they’re very obviously associated with temples of a particular period.”
Many conclusions will be drawn from the data in the coming months, but some experts are thrilled simply to have it.

“I have been to all the sites described and at a stroke, they spring into life . . . it is as if a bright light has been switched on to illuminate the previous dark veil that covered these great sites,” Charles Higham, research professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, told the Guardian. “Personally, it is wonderful to be alive as these new discoveries are being made. Emotionally, I am stunned. Intellectually, I am stimulated.”

The full study can be found in the August edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The head of a Hindu deity’s statue from the 7th century was returned by France and reattached to its body Thursday for display at a museum, more than 130 years after it was spirited away.

Sopheng Cheang / Associated PressThe head of a stone sculpture of Harihara, a Hindu deity, is displayed on a table before a ceremony to reattach it to its body at the National Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Thursday.

The stone sculpture is of Harihara, a deity that combines aspects of Vishnu and Shiva, the two most important gods in the Hindu pantheon who represent the creation of the universe and its destruction. It was taken from the Phnom Da temple in southern Takeo province by French researchers in 1882 or 1883 and was displayed at France’s Guimet Museum.

About 200 government officials, representatives of foreign governments, ambassadors and officials from the Guimet Museum attended the ceremony to reattach the head at Cambodia’s National Museum.

“After it was separated 130 years ago, we are welcoming the reunification of the head and the torso of Harihara,” Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An said at the ceremony. “According to our Khmer culture, the reunion is symbolic of prosperity.”

He appealed to other countries that hold Cambodian artifacts to return them.

A 1993 Cambodian law prohibits the removal of cultural artifacts without government permission. Pieces taken after that date have stronger legal standing to compel their owners abroad to return them. But there is also general agreement in the art world that pieces are deemed to be acquired illegitimately if they were exported without clear and valid documentation after 1970 — the year of a United Nations cultural agreement targeting trafficking in antiquities.

CHHIN SOTHY / AFP / Getty ImagesTourists look at decapitated statue of Harihara at the national museum in Phnom Penh, before its head was reattached.

In October, Cambodia welcomed the return of two stone statues from the Angkor period that were looted during the country’s civil war and taken to Europe, where they spent the past three decades. The sculptures — a 9th century head of Shiva and a late 12th to early 13th century male divinity head — were formally handed over by Norwegian collector Morten Bosterud.

Also in June 2014, three 1,000-year-old statues depicting Hindu mythology were brought back to Cambodia. They were also looted from a temple and put in Western art collections.

Cambodia was ruled by Hindu kings for centuries, and it was the main religion of the country before Buddhism took over. More than 90 per cent of Cambodians today are Buddhists.

SEN MORONOM, Cambodia — The trip to the hills of eastern Cambodia had all the makings of a luxurious getaway: delicious fresh fruit fed by hand, a dip in a refreshingly cold watering hole and a relaxing massage.

But I wasn’t receiving these amenities. Elderly elephants were. And I was one of several tourists paying for the privilege of doting on them.

At the Mondulkiri Project, it’s not the people who call the shots, but the elephants. Visitors from all over the world come here for the chance to interact with the behemoth creatures by washing them, feeding them, playing with them and, of course, getting selfies with them. One thing that doesn’t happen: riding on the animals’ backs.

Named for Cambodia’s most sparsely populated province, the Mondulkiri Project aims to act as a sanctuary for elephants that previously worked for timber companies or as attractions in the tourist hub of Siem Reap, home to the Angkor Wat site. The Mondulkiri Project also seeks to give the local indigenous population, called the Bunong, opportunities for jobs and help in curtailing logging and promoting forest conservation.

Kristi Eaton/The Associated PressThis June 2015 photo shows tourists trekking through the jungles of Mondulkiri Province, located in eastern Cambodia.

The Mondulkiri Project began in 2013, founded by the Tree family, who are not members of the Bunong community but who support the Bunongs with revenue from the Mondulkiri Project. The Tree family offers trekking along with the elephant experiences, and they run Tree Lodge, a bare-bones but comfortable set of bungalows with magnificent views of the Cambodian countryside.

During my stay, I joined several other tourists, both solo and group travellers, in cleaning and feeding the elephants. We also got an in-depth explanation of the project, its goals and why preserving the area is important.

Then came the fun part: getting up close and personal with the gigantic mammals. The elephants spend all their time in a protected area of the forest, with local guides watching over them. The elephants were friendly, hungry and eager to interact with us.

For the humans, there was a lunch of rice, vegetables, meat and iced coffee. Then an English-speaking Bunong guide led us on an easy trek through the lush jungles as we headed to a chilly watering hole to wash one of the creatures.

More photo opportunity than actual cleansing, the elephant seemed to enjoy getting his back scratched and didn’t mind the picture-taking. We all had the same post-cleansing goal anyway: a nap.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/elephants-get-love-and-care-in-cambodia-with-tourists-doting-help/feed0stdThe Mondulkiri Project aims to act as a sanctuary for elephants that previously worked for timber companies or as attractions in the tourists hub of Siem Reap.Kristi Eaton/The Associated PressEssentials for visiting Phnom Penh: Historic sites, markets and Cambodian culturehttp://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/essentials-for-visiting-phnom-penh-historic-sites-markets-and-cambodian-culture
http://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/essentials-for-visiting-phnom-penh-historic-sites-markets-and-cambodian-culture#respondMon, 02 Nov 2015 14:21:35 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=930479

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Bigger. Taller. Fancier.

Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh is undergoing a staggering period of development 40 years after the communist Khmer Rouge regime took over the city and forced thousands to evacuate to rural Cambodia in its brutal campaign to create an agrarian-based society.

Today, the citizens of Phnom Penh are still recovering from the devastation of the past while a stylish regional capital comes into its own. Dilapidated structures are being bought, torn down and replaced with shiny high-rises. High-end restaurants featuring Khmer and Western-style cuisine fight for space alongside street vendors and busy cafes while rooftop bars are packed at night.

WHAT’S NEW

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S-21, is where the Khmer Rouge tortured and brutalized an estimated 17,000 Cambodians before they were executed. Located in the southern portion of the city in a nondescript neighbourhood, Tuol Sleng was a high school before becoming a prison. With the recent 40th anniversary of the regime taking power in 1975, a new memorial dedicated to the victims was installed in March.

Cambodia’s largest shopping centre, Aeon Mall, opened in 2014 in Phnom Penh to much fanfare. The behemoth shopping centre features an ice rink, food court, movie theatre and nearly 200 stores.

In addition to visiting Tuol Sleng, the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek is a must-see. Located about 30 minutes outside of Phnom Penh by tuk-tuk — the ubiquitous three-wheeled taxis — the site is where Cambodians from S-21 were sent to be executed from 1975 to 1979. Pieces of skull and bone can still be found throughout the site, which contains numerous mass graves. A haunting but informative audio tour available in several languages provides historical context.

Within the city proper, the National Museum of Cambodia houses sculpture, pottery and other pieces ranging from prehistoric times to the Angkorian period (ninth to 15th centuries). After touring the museum, head to the courtyard garden for views of the museum buildings, which were inspired by Khmer temples.

Just down the street is the Royal Palace, official residence of King Norodom Sihamoni. Full of Khmer architectural elements including stupas and towering spires, the palace complex includes Preah Vihear Preah Keo Morakot, or Silver Pagoda, the royal temple with Buddhas made of gold, silver and emeralds. More than 5,000 silver tiles cover the temple floor.

Kristi Eaton/The Associated PressSkulls on display at the Choeung Ek killing field south of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, one of the sites where the Khmer Rouge executed and buried thousands of Cambodians during the regime's reign from 1975 to 1979.

TIPS

Accommodations range from dorm-style hostels to small boutiques to five-star luxury resorts. The spectacular Raffles Hotel Le Royal has all the amenities — swimming pools, bar, spa, restaurants — as well a distinctive history: Foreign journalists stayed here while covering the civil war back in the 1970s.

Cambodia uses the U.S. dollar as well as the riel. Anything less than a dollar must be paid for in riel. One U.S. dollar equals 4,000 riels at most places, though some shops use the official exchange rate, which is slightly higher.

Always carry small bills. Though some higher-end establishments may accept credit cards, most places will not. Streets vendors, markets and moto or tuk-tuk drivers will only accept cash.

Phnom Penh can get hot and humid during the dry season (November to April) and air conditioning is considered a luxury in many corners, so prepare to sweat. Drink lots of water. Temperatures dip in the wet season (May to October) and are coolest in December and January.

If visiting a temple, remove shoes and hats before entering the pagoda. At the Silver Pagoda on the Royal Palace grounds, men are asked to wear long trousers while women should cover their shoulders and wear long trousers or a long skirt.

Non-locals may be targeted by aggressive street vendors, beggars and tuk-tuk drivers. If not interested, firmly say no thank you or ignore them. If you do hire a tuk-tuk, settle on a price beforehand.

AFP/Getty ImagesA tourist looks at ceramic pots while shopping at the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, July 24, 2004 in a file photo.

HANGING OUT

Tuol Tom Poung Market, commonly known as the Russian Market among expats and visitors, teems with vendors selling everything from journals, DVDs and jewelry to luggage and clothes. Make sure to haggle: Some of the name-brand merchandise is (obviously) fake. Food vendors selling local dishes, coffee, tea and fresh fruit smoothies are also located within the market.

Located a few blocks from the grand Independence Monument, Street 308 has been refashioned from a quiet lane into a popular area for nightlife with trendy restaurants and bars.

Head to the hole-in-the-wall Red Bar to sip wine or meander down a nearby tiny alley to get to Meat and Drink, a snug, modern eatery serving wraps, salads and burgers.

For a different view of the city, head to the Riverside area, located along the Tonle Sap River, to sip cocktails at the Foreign Correspondents Club. The cocktails are a bit pricier than in other areas in the city, but the view makes it worthwhile.

Cambodia’s most popular tourist attraction — the complex of ancient temples that includes Angkor Wat — is suffering from a form of overexposure: At least five foreign visitors have been arrested and deported this year for taking nude photos at the sacred sites.

Authorities have no tolerance for people stripping down at Angkor Archaeological Park, a sprawling, centuries-old UNESCO World Heritage Site that drew 2 million visitors last year. The incidents are also upsetting to ordinary Cambodians, for whom the Khmer-era complex holds enormous spiritual and historical significance.

“Angkor Wat is the most famous sacred … temple in Cambodia, where everyone — not only tourists but also Cambodians themselves — has to pay respect,” said Rattanak Te, an administrative assistant who lives in Phnom Penh, the capital. “It definitely upsets me and all Cambodians, because outsiders will think we — Cambodian people — are careless and do not take good care of this World Heritage (site) by allowing these tourists to do such an unacceptable act.”

This month, guards arrested two American sisters after seeing them snap photos of each other’s naked backsides in the temple of Preah Khan, said Kerya Chau Sun, spokeswoman for the Apsara Authority, which manages the temple complex in Siem Reap, in northwestern Cambodia. Lindsey Adams, 22, and Leslie Adams, 20, both of Prescott, Arizona, were each sentenced to a six-month suspended sentence, a fine of 1 million riel ($250), deportation and a four-year ban from the country.

In January, three French men in their 20s were deported after they were caught taking nude photographs at Angkor complex. Another photo showing a topless woman at the site has circulated on social media, but officials believe it is fake, according to Chau Sun. Three tourists were also caught riding a motorbike naked near Phnom Penh in January, according to local media.

Reached via email, one of the Frenchmen, Rodolphe Fourgeot, said he did not want to talk about the case. He said it demonstrates “endemic corruption” in Cambodia but did not elaborate.

A message on a cellphone listed for Lindsey Adams said the voicemail was full and not accepting messages. She also didn’t respond to a Facebook message. A message was left on a cellphone number listed for the sisters’ mother.

This year’s incidents were not firsts for the Angkor temples, but Chau Sun said earlier attempts by tourists to get naked were thwarted.

Signs at the temples and ticketing booths urge visitors to behave respectfully, and Chau Sun said the Apsara Authority plans to add posters warning them that taking nude photographs can lead to arrest and deportation.

“As a Cambodian, I am hurt … I think especially to the poor Cambodians saving to be able to come across the country to pray at Angkor,” she said. “They don’t understand why people could behave like that.”

Angkor Archaeological Park is the biggest tourist draw for this Southeast Asian country, which still feels the effects of the Khmer Rouge, the fanatical communist regime behind a reign of terror that left an estimated 1.7 million people dead from 1975 to 1979.

AP Photo/Heng SinithTourists talk as they wait to take pictures of sunrise in front of the famed Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap province in northwestern Cambodia March 30, 2008.

The massive Angkor complex is in a sense a proud counterpoint to that painful legacy. It contains the remains of capitals of the Khmer Empire, which existed from the 9th to the 15th centuries and controlled most of Southeast Asia at its peak. For a time, Angkor was among the world’s biggest cities.

The temples are renowned for their architecture and art, with countless intricate carvings, including semi-nude spirits known as apsaras. Angkor Wat is the largest and best preserved of the structures.

The temples are much more than stone ruins for most Cambodians, said Trevor Sofield, a professor of Tourism at the University of Tasmania in Australia. They are places of Buddhist worship as well as a symbol of the Khmer heritage, he said. He added that the Apsara Authority and UNESCO should focus on educating the public about the living sacred nature of the site in addition to its historical characteristics.

Angkor is not the only world-renowned site that has had to deal with nude tourists. In 2014, officials at Peru’s Machu Picchu said they were increasing surveillance after visitors were caught taking nude photographs or running through the ancient site naked.

AP Photo/Heng SinithA hill tribe farmer is silhouetted as she walks back from her farm at a remote rural area in Ti Prampi village, northeast of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015.

Amichay Rab, a 32-year-old accountant from Tel Aviv, Israel, was one of those tourists who posed in the buff. Rab documented his nude escapades while on a nine-month trip through Central and South America on his blog. Many of the photos were taken early in the morning before there were crowds, he said, and local residents often snapped the photos for him.

“I was anxious sometimes but was never afraid (of) getting in trouble as I was very discreet,” he said. “I was waiting for the right moment in order to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.”

Cambodian Mollyda Keo said people there recognize that different cultures and societies have differing views on the body and what is deemed acceptable. Cambodian women, for example, will only swim in a T-shirt and shorts but are used to seeing Western women in bikinis, she said.

She said posing naked at the temples crosses the line.

“I just feel they don’t respect the culture,” she said. “You come from another culture. You should respect ours.”

One morning, a Khmer Rouge district leader came with a group of Kong Chlops agents on horses. The work bell had rung, and the Me-Krum walked from one barn sty to the next calling us all to a meeting. We gathered and waited for instruction. All around us were Kong Chlops with American M16 rifles or Chinese AK-47s strapped around their shoulders. They looked at us as if we were their enemies from another life.

As the head district leader began to speak, we pretended to applaud, but our weak hands were screaming for mercy. We didn’t care about Angkar, the Khmer Communist Party. All we wanted was food. The leader informed us that Angkar wanted us to start a new project. The rice had not grown as well as expected in Tuk Chjo Village, so we would go back there to work.

After our rice porridge — by now this porridge had little or no rice in it, sometimes just boiled water with a few grains — we started back to Tuk Chjo, the place where we’d begun this dark part of our lives. All of the children in my group had lost their parents there. Hundreds of us walked onward with our few belongings … a mournful parade of slow-moving, swollen skeletons.

I daydreamed about which way I would go, if we were finally freed. I didn’t think I could ever find my way back to our home in Kampong Speu. But if I didn’t, how would I tell my other brothers and sister who were separated from us when the Khmer Rouge took over, when we were living in the city, if they survived, where to find me?

Back in Tuk Chjo Village, I went to the riverside to wash up. I remembered where Da and I had buried Mother — I’d marked the spot in my mind — and the exact time of day. Yet I was glad to still be alive, even in the midst of horrors and deprivation.

At the temple, we were joined by about 50 city children from another mobile team. Together, there were more than a hundred children still alive. We’d had a common experience. We’d been witnesses to killings, victims of beatings and senseless sicknesses. The temple made me think about a time in the distant past when Cambodians followed a religion of compassion and love. They erected statues in Buddha’s likeness and wrapped garlands around his shoulders. Where were these people now? What happened to them? Had they all been killed, even the monks?

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“Angkar Leu [the High Organization] is coming!” the leader shouted, pulling me out of my memory. We were ordered to go to the highway and wait for the arrival of the great revolutionary leader. Everyone in the village had to assemble and greet him.

They told all the Old People (the rural folk) who looked healthy and strong to work close to the highway so that Angkar Leu would see that everything was going well. The New People (like me, from the cities) were all to work behind, hidden. We were the skinny, unhealthy-looking ones, with our swollen bodies.

Soldiers made sure we didn’t run out in protest to show this Angkar that we were dying of starvation and slave labour. Not that we would have dared to do such a thing.

I pretended to work hard in the rice fields. But I was really looking for baby mice. When I found a bunch, I cooked them in my teapot. The other children were envious

Around midday, military jeeps with red flags arrived. They were filled with Chinese officials. I learned years later that the Khmer Rouge had imported their Great Leap Forward plan from China. Maybe all the rice we produced was going to feed the overpopulated masses there.

I worked from dawn to dusk, 12 hours or more a day, without a break or lunch. I sometimes pretended to labour hard, but my real work was looking for baby mice. One morning, I found a bunch of them in a hole. I grabbed them and hid them in my black pants. When I got home, I cooked them in my teapot. These little mice were very tender because they’d just come from their mother’s belly. I boiled them in my pot. The other children were envious.

Some begged me to share, but I was no longer willing to do so. I knew I had to take care of myself or die. If I’d had to, I think I would have eaten a human being.

Life got a little better in November as the harvest approached. I dreamed of bowls filled with white rice and curried chicken. I received only a spoonful of rice every day. But it was enough to bring down my swelling.

As soon as the harvest season began, we had to work extra hard to collect rice and pick up every grain that fell to the ground during threshing. The Kong Chlops (spies) and other Khmer Rouge soldiers would check our pockets and search our bodies for rice when we left the field.

The woman looked around to see if there were any Khmer Rouge in the area. Just because it was quiet, it didn’t mean they weren’t watching

One morning it was my turn to sweep the temple grounds. It was around midmorning when I finished and started to walk down to the field to look for my group. But there was no one around. I kept looking and searching for everyone. I couldn’t understand where my group had gone. Suddenly, I was alone, with a whole world of rice fields, one after another, to myself. I bent down and crawled on my knees into one of the rice paddies. I crouched down and started to harvest the rice with my hand, pulling and squeezing the grain a handful at a time onto my checkered red krama. I also put some into my pockets.

Then a stone smashed into my shoulder. “Who’s in there?” A voice called for me to come out. I knew I had been caught. There were two people.

“Get out now! Don’t think that you’re going to get away,” they both yelled. There were two Kong Chlops, wanting me dead. My knees trembled as I stood up.

“Met, kneel and take the rice out of your pockets.” I started to empty my pockets for them.

“What’s in the krama?” the other one asked.

“Rice, Comrade,” I told them. They started to laugh.

“Untie it and empty everything on the ground.”

“Yes, Met.” My hands were shaking. One of the Kong Chlops kicked me from behind. I fell on my face.

The pair of them cut some vines with which to tie my hands behind my back and pushed me up the side of a ditch for further interrogation. They took me to a shady place under some palm trees and propped me in front of a group of Khmer Rouge children. The children were squatting in the shade, smoking cigarettes. None of them were from my mobile camp or Tuk Chjo Village. One of them was to be my judge.

“Met, we caught this thief stealing rice,” one of the Kong Chlops said. “Do you know him? Does he belong to your camp?”

“No, but leave him here. We can take care of him,” said the judge. The two Kong Chlops left, but the torture was not over yet. Still with my hands tied behind my back, I squatted in the circle of Khmer Rouge children. One of them came up to me with a bamboo stick, then poked me in the ear and laughed.

“Look at his big ears. They look like elephant ears,” he taunted. The other children started to laugh and kick me. I fell flat and at that moment, a hard kick came from behind my head. They left me there for dead. I must have blacked out.

When I came to, everything was still, as if no one existed but me. It was late afternoon and the sun was about to set. I must have been lying there for several hours. I looked around and saw nothing except birds eating rice from the field. I was struggling to untie my hands, but my skin was cracked and the bruises from the beating scared me. There was blood mixed with mud all over my body.

I felt I must have been saved by the grace of my mother’s protection. She must have been watching. Suddenly, I saw a woman walking toward me, and when I called for help she quickly came to my rescue. She was one of the New People.

The woman looked around to see if there were any Khmer Rouge in the area. Just because it was quiet, it didn’t mean they weren’t watching. She untied me and said, “Run away from here. Go as fast as you can.” I didn’t know her name. I didn’t even get a chance to say thank you.

That evening, when I went to get my spoonful of rice, my Me-Krum didn’t say a word. There were so many children under his control that he must not have even missed me. I felt so relieved. After my meal, I went to sleep with my pain and tears, calling to my mother for assistance. Somehow, thinking of her helped me forget the pain.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/seng-ty-angkars-terrified-child-slaves/feed0stdFieldChildren.jpgSeng Ty: The horrors of the Cambodian genocide, as seen through the eyes of a 7-year-oldhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/seng-ty-the-horrors-of-the-cambodian-genocide-as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-a-7-year-old
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/seng-ty-the-horrors-of-the-cambodian-genocide-as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-a-7-year-old#respondTue, 17 Jun 2014 04:01:54 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=156586

We had been dropped off on the highway between Siem Reap and Battambang Provinces in Svay Sisophon, a place that seemed hostile and uninhabitable. We saw nothing but flat fields flooded with water and a river that seemed to go on forever. Except for a bridge that arched over the river, there was only water. Hundreds of us abandoned on this windy plain of water huddled to keep warm.

“There’s a village ahead, up that way,” someone shouted. “Move toward it! It’s called Tuk Chjo and it’s your new home.” That sounded permanent.

We were herded toward the fields. The Khmer Rouge wanted us to cultivate rice on this flooded plain even though the water was too deep to cultivate anything. We walked to the nearly empty village of Tuk Chjo along a broken, muddy road. I could see a few palm trees in other distant villages.

The dry land looked like a small island in the middle of the ocean. I was wet and hungry. We couldn’t cook anything, but my mother retrieved from her bag the leftover salted rice she had saved and gave a little to each of us. My father and older siblings went to relieve themselves and returned with dry wood and branches for a fire. We waited many hours, from morning to late in the evening, before the village leader finally came with a group of soldiers and told us where to go.

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“Attention!” he said. “You New People” — this was the name for those of us who never had officially joined their revolution — “must stay here tonight. Tomorrow we will assign you by family to a section in the village where you will stay. Angkar has sent you under my command. This is District Five. Do as Angkar tells you.”

We still didn’t know who Angkar was, but nevertheless felt we had to obey everything. (The term meant “The Organization” — Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea.) All of us who had been unloaded from the trucks were now crowded together on this little island for the night.

My parents laid down the straw mat on a dry spot. I dozed off while my older siblings helped Mother to set up mosquito nets and tried to make a fire.

Other people were doing the same thing. We all wondered why we had been brought here, so far from home. It was wet, cold, and windy, and the ground was soggy. When my mother woke me up to eat, it was very late into the night. We ate in silence. Out there, in the middle of nowhere, other people were sleeping and eating. They burned cut-up tires to light their family circles and the flames made it seem as if we were floating, lost, on a raft, drifting with the slow-moving currents. My parents started to cry. It had all happened so fast. One day we were well off; the next day, we were dirt poor and homeless.

Angkar wanted to make everyone equal in socioeconomic status by eliminating the rich and educated

My father, who had worked as a doctor, understood this. Again he warned us, whispering quietly, “No one say anything to anyone about our family, about our past, our family history. Nothing. Just pretend that we were poor. Tell them that we collected cans and junk for a living.”

Before our forced evacuation, my father had seen with his own eyes how the Khmer Rouge killed wealthy, bourgeois and educated people because they exploited the peasants. He knew that anyone with credentials, anyone who had worked as a government official, teacher, doctor, or lawyer, would be killed as subversives — Angkar wanted to make everyone equal in socioeconomic status by eliminating the rich and educated. Father had heard about their tactics, and how they would try to trick us.

In my sleep I wasn’t aware that anything bad was happening to us. I dreamed that everything was normal again. I was back in my home in Kampong Speu with all my family. In the morning, I would be going to the bazaar with my mother. The smell of fresh fruit, vegetables, and raw meat wove together. I was running and playing with my friends out behind my house.

Our rice was running out, so Mother had only put a fistful in the pan, and we didn’t have any salted fish to make it tasty, so the porridge tasted like water. My brothers drank it from their bowls.

“We are now ready to put you into groups,” announced one of the Khmer Rouge, a tall, scrawny peasant. We weren’t allowed to choose where we would stay. These soldiers took groups of two or three families and crowded us into tiny thatched houses. Our group of more than 20 people was given a thatched house on stilts with a tin roof. We hardly had any room to move around in or sleep. Every family stayed to itself, squeezing between the strangers. Those who tied hammocks between the posts outside were told to take them down because it wouldn’t be fair to those who didn’t have hammocks. They wanted us all inside no matter how tight the space was. More people were still on their way. Some were taken farther out to other villages.

One night, the village leader came to inform us all of a meeting. Every family member must attend, he said, young and old. We would be told about Angkar’s plan for our lives.

We now belonged to Angkar. There are no rich or poor. Angkar had eliminated all the imperialism and classism. We will all wear the same clothes, eat the same food and work in the same fields. Angkar had fought many years for us, and we must build our new lives with Angkar. If anyone talks about their old lives, Angkar would take you away for “re-education.”

At that meeting, we were told that those who had Chinese, Cham (Muslim) or Vietnamese ancestry would be allowed to return to their homelands. Those who had been soldiers of the previous government would be taken to Phnom Penh to work — “Angkar needs soldiers at all levels to help fight the imperialist Americans,” the village leader said.

The speaker then appealed to former professors, students, teachers, and doctors to serve Angkar, too — “Angkar needs people with education to help rebuild our country as soon as possible.” He spoke into a megaphone so that everyone could hear. People in black clothes were shouting, “Che yo! Che yo! Glory to Angkar! Glory to Angkar!”

Many people stood up to volunteer, believing that the Khmer Rouge were sincere, and admitted their past.

“Let us appreciate these brave individuals who have stood up,” the soldier with the megaphone shouted. “Che yo! Che yo!” everyone shouted. Even Father raised his hand in a cheer. But he knew what they were saying was a hoax, and he and my mother sat still, with us huddled all around them.

“Write down your name on this piece of paper,” the leader told those who had stood up. “You are Angkar’s special comrades. You will set an example for others.” Some people with Chinese, Cham or Vietnamese ancestry were excited at the prospect of returning home. But my father knew something was not right. He could smell blood, and knew that these people were signing away their lives. They weren’t going home. They were on their way to a mass grave.

Two days later, the “special comrades” were told to wait for the trucks along the riverbank. Some said good-bye to their friends and neighbors. I was sitting on the front steps of our new house watching two of the families who had been living with us get ready to leave. They were so happy to be returning home. In the afternoon, two or three trucks took them away. My father knew that these people were on their way to interrogation and execution.

Black soon became our life’s only color — in sleep, while awake, while eating, and even while thinking. From then on, no one was allowed to wear colors, not even shoes or eyeglasses with colors. Angkar would not be content until all traces of imperialism and the bourgeoisie were eliminated. Young girls were ordered to cut their long hair and to work alongside men, as their equals. All of us were the same, with short hair and black clothes, fitted for moving earth and plowing the rice paddies. No one was excused from the drudgery of a peasant’s life.

We had each been given a checkered krama, a black shirt, and a pair of black pajama-like pants. The checkered krama became the symbol of the Khmer Rouge. Aside from that one outfit, this all-black wardrobe was our responsibility to create. My parents didn’t know how to dye clothes — they were used to going to the market and bargaining for ready-made clothes. But an old woman took pity on us and showed us how to dip our fabrics into natural dyes. And so we entered the colorless world of the Khmer Rouge.

At the nightly meetings, after they were finished telling us what they wanted us to know, they’d ask if anyone had questions or suggestions. A few people said yes, and they were taken away. The Khmer Rouge pretended that they liked those people for getting up and giving suggestions or making their dissatisfaction known. We never saw those people again.

Then the Khmer Rouge broke up our families. Most of the young adults were sent off to labour camps. All of my brothers except Da, and all of my sisters were told to pack and leave the next day. My mother knew the labour camp would be a torturous place, and people would die from overwork and starvation. She cried and told them to take care of themselves and, whatever happened, to come back to Tuk Chjo village to reunite with their family if given the chance. The soldiers came and took them. I was only seven. Among the children in our family, only Da and I were left. I couldn’t understand what was going on.

My parents were assigned to work by digging irrigation canals. I had to work pulling weeds in the fields. People began to suffer from malaria, diarrhea, cholera, and infection. During the rainy season, when people died, there was no dry land for burial, so the bodies were thrown into the river.

When we ran out of food, the Khmer Rouge gave us rations. Once a day, each person got a cup of rice and some salt and nothing else. During the night, Father, Da, and I took our mosquito net and used it to gather shrimp and fish. When it was the planting season, food was scarce so they gave us just one cup of rice per family instead of per person. At night, village spies watched and listened.

One boy I knew had been stealing palm juice every night because he didn’t get enough to eat. Every day, an older village man climbed up the palm tree with several bamboo canisters to retrieve the juice. He would cut the flower bud of the palm and put the bamboo canisters underneath them to let the juice drip into them overnight. This child had been keenly observing, and took the sweet juice from the canisters to fill his starved belly. The owner of the juice eventually found out and informed the Khmer Rouge of his loss.

One night, a couple of Khmer Rouge soldiers were waiting for the boy to come down from the tree. When he did, the Khmer Rouge didn’t question him. They just beat him up, tortured him with their bayonets, broke his bones, and then killed him. He was left there unburied.

When his mother found out the next day, she screamed violently and her tears dripped on her son’s broken body. His blood was dried and his skin yellowed and swollen. He was her only son, and as she was trying to dig the earth with her fingernails to bury him, the Khmer Rouge came to fetch her. They didn’t want anyone mourning the dead. That would be a sign of weakness. So they killed her as well. They said they were doing her a favor by letting her join her dead son.

At the next education meeting, the Khmer Rouge used the boy and his mother as examples of the enemies of Angkar, telling us that anyone who dared to commit such a crime would be punished. “No one steals from Angkar,” they warned.

We always felt very insecure at these meetings. The Khmer Rouge seemed to stare with suspicion at my parents and at me. Angkar apparently didn’t believe that we had been poor, because we looked Chinese and had light skin. To them, we looked like people who had experienced too much leisure. We belonged to the wealthy class. The night they came for my parents, I felt that they would kill them and leave me to die a slow death by starvation. But they only wanted to question them to see if they were telling the truth. My father never said much to us after that incident. He shut himself up, even from us, as if he were deaf and mute.

Another night, Angkar called a meeting of all the children. Parents were told to stay home. This time my parents thought that they would never see us again. All their lives they had worked hard to serve us, to care for us, and to secure a good future for us. Mother devoted all her life to rearing us and helping us grow into good human beings. Suddenly they had no control over what would happen to us. Our destiny was in the hands of Angkar. My mother could not complain or show any sign of resistance or protest. Angkar saw all and punished all for any deviance in the new society.

Pictures of parents holding hands with children were cut at the hands to show this break in ownership. ‘Angkar,’ he said, ‘is your parent now’

Once again, the Khmer Rouge children were tasked with reminding us who we were. They looked at us, the New People, with sharp eyes. The Khmer Rouge kept their eyes closely on men and women from the city. The fields and all the land and rivers belonged to the Old People, born of earth and water, and they had authority over us. They were free to roam about and their children could run and play. They could mock me by calling me names and saying I was useless. They didn’t think I could survive the life they had because I was born into a wealthy existence, one they believed once had authority over them.

“You Chinese!” they would scream and laugh. “You can’t cultivate rice. You know nothing but leisure.”

All of us were called up to a blackboard and forced to erase ourselves from the family of the past. Pictures of parents holding hands with children were cut at the hands to show this break in ownership.

The leader instructed us to abandon any feelings of belonging to our parents. “Angkar,” he said, “is your parent now.”

The family of Dave Walker, a Canadian filmmaker who went missing in Cambodia in February, says he was found dead Thursday.

A statement issued on behalf of Walker’s family says his body was reportedly discovered by a child at the Angkor Wat temples in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Cambodian law enforcement officials told the family it appeared Walker had died several weeks ago

The statement says a doctor at the site was unable to determine a cause of death and an autopsy will be held to try to determine how and when Walker died.

Walker, who was 58, had been living in Cambodia for the past year and a half. He was staying at a guest house when he stepped out while a housekeeper tended to his room and was not seen again.

Animist Farm FilmsDave Walker was last seen when he left his guest house in the northwest city of Siem Reap. He left behind his laptop, phone and passport.

The disappearance baffled family and friends, who said Walker spoke the language, knew the streets and was familiar with the local culture.

Walker and a partner had set up a film company in Siem Reap in July 2012 called Animist Farm Films. They had recently been working on a documentary about the Khmer Rouge regime, which left close to two million people dead.

Walker grew up in Edmonton but last lived in Toronto, where he studied for a Master’s degree at York University in 2009. His family said he has lived and worked in Southeast Asia on and off for years.

He also co-authored a non-fiction book, called Hello My Big Big Honey, which chronicles the experiences of Bangkok bar girls and their Western admirers.

]]>stdA body believed to be that of missing Canadian Dave Walker is seen in a jungle at the famed Angkor complex in Siem Reap province on May 1.FilesAnimist Farm FilmsCanadian suspected in sex abuse of young boys tries to kill himself as Cambodia police came for arresthttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canadian-suspected-in-sex-abuse-of-young-boys-tries-to-kill-himself-as-cambodia-police-came-for-arrest
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:30:18 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=431745

Child protection workers in Cambodia say a Montreal man locked himself in his hotel room and tried to commit suicide by slicing open his belly and slashing his wrists when police moved in to arrest him on child-sex allegations.

The dramatic confrontation came after child protection workers interviewed six boys, the youngest age 10, about suspected sexual abuse in Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Wat, the world heritage site of the world’s largest religious monument.

Workers with Action Pour Les Enfants, a child protection group in Cambodia, were tipped to a suspicious tourist by a non-governmental organization. APLE workers spoke with two boys who both confirmed sex abuse, said Yi Moden, APLE’s deputy director of field operations.

When he was located, APLE workers saw him taking four other boys into the forest, where he disappeared from view. Police were called but by the time officers arrived, the suspect had left the area, said Mr. Moden.

The boys, ages 10, 12, 13 and 14, were taken to a police station where they were questioned; three of them told officers of sex abuse, he said.

After hearing the testimony of the boys, a local prosecutor ordered the arrest of the Montreal man.

“When he became aware of the police and what was happening, he locked himself into the guest house room and tried to commit suicide,” Mr. Moden said.

The suspect used a knife to cut his stomach and slash his wrists, he said. The injuries were significant, at first considered life threatening.

Police wrestled a pocket knife away from the naked suspect before taking him to hospital.

“The police rescued him and he is now in hospital. The doctors are making sure he is in good condition before he is charged,” he said.

He rented a low rate room and stayed there alone. Child advocates spoke to children in the area who said the man was seen hanging around about eight days prior to his arrest.

AP Photo/David Longstreath, FileTourists gather on the top of the 10th century temple Bakheng in the Angkor Wat complex near Siem Reap, Cambodia,

The original tip came to APLE on Feb. 20 and the arrest came on Sunday. A police investigation is working to identify other potential victims. Police believe there are “many” young victims, said Mr. Moden.

The Montreal man is to be charged with sexual intercourse with minors under age of 15. He is believed to have travelled to Cambodia alone but it is not known when he departed Canada.

Poverty and lax enforcement made Cambodia a destination for child sex tourists. Even when caught, foreign pedophiles were often able to pay a small amount to a victim’s family — or a bribe to officials — to escape charges, but, in recent years, Cambodia has made ending child sexual exploitation a priority.

As part of the crackdown, the Cambodian government has called on hotel employees and non-governmental agencies to report suspicious activity.

It was in Cambodia that Christopher Neil was accused of preying on children in the notorious “Swirl Face” case. The former B.C. English teacher tried to hide his identity in photos of child sex abuse by digitally swirling his face. Police re-manipulated it and caught him. He returned to Canada in 2012 after five years in a Thai prison.

Between 2009 and 2011, 73 Canadians abroad requested consular assistance after being accused of abusing or molesting children or possessing child pornography, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“At at this point, with the information provided, we are not aware of this case,” said Jean-Bruno Villeneuve, spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“Consular officials in Bangkok with the assistance of the Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh stand ready to provide consular assistance as required to Canadians.”

In September, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced plans to target travelling Canadian sex predators. The new legislation would require convicted offenders to inform authorities of foreign travel plans so authorities at their destination can be alerted.

On Monday, Paloma Aguilar, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Peter MacKay, said the bill will be introduced “in due course.”

]]>stdCambodiaAP Photo/David Longstreath, FileAlberta man who went missing in Cambodia may have been 'silenced' over film about war criminals, friend sayshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/alberta-man-who-went-missing-in-cambodia-may-have-been-silenced-over-film-about-war-criminals-friend-says
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Canadian officials said Wednesday they were working with Cambodian authorities to try to find an Edmonton filmmaker and journalist who disappeared in the country late last week.

Dave Walker has not been seen since he left his guesthouse in the northwest city of Siem Reap on Friday afternoon. He left behind his laptop, phone and passport. Cambodian police are investigating.

The 58-year-old had co-founded a film company in Cambodia but his friend Peter Vronsky said he wondered whether Mr. Walker had been “silenced” by someone who felt threatened by his efforts to trace former Khmer Rouge.

It’s possible that he scared some guy

During the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge waged a genocide in Cambodia, killing more than a million people as it tried to impose hardline communist ideology in the country. Several Khmers have gone on trial in recent years.

Mr. Vronsky said Mr. Walker had a long interest in tracing what had happened to the various Khmer officials. Among his projects was a screenplay titled The Man From Year Zero, about former Khmer Rouge war criminals living in exile in North America.

“It’s possible that he scared some guy,” Mr. Vronsky said. “They’re now hauling these guys into court who, for 20 years, have been walking free and giving press interviews. And suddenly now there’s a whole series of trials taking place.

But another friend, Alan Parkhouse, editor of The Phnom Penh Post, said Mr. Walker was not working on any stories that would have upset former Khmer Rouge. “Quite the opposite, in fact,” he said.

Rather, he was developing a film, based on a story he wrote for the paper, about a Khmer Rouge who saved his village. “It was an unusual story in that the Khmer Rouge leader of the village was actually a nice guy, and still is,” he said.

MARK PETERS/AFP/Getty ImagesFormer Khmer Rouge leader "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea in the courtroom during trial at the ECCC in Phnom Penh on Oct. 16, 2013. Cambodia's war crimes court will start hearing closing statements on October 16, in the trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of masterminding one of the worst horrors of the 20th century.

Canadian consular and law enforcement officials “are in contact with local authorities in Cambodia to gather additional information,” said Saro Khatchadourian, press secretary to Minister of State Lynne Yelich.

According to his website, Mr. Walker co-founded the Cambodian-registered company Animist Farm Films in July 2012, to produce “high-concept, human interest” films and revive the country’s movie industry.

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He began traveling in Southeast Asia following a stint in the British military, which trained him in intelligence, the Edmonton Journal reported in a 1995 profile. He is the co-author of Hello My Big Big Honey!, a book of love letters by foreigners to Thailand’s “bar girls.”

Police launched an investigation after being contacted by the Australian embassy, which handles Canada’s consular affairs in Cambodia, The Phnom Penh Post reported.

“We are worried about his safety now,” Yut Sinin, an Immigration Police officer told the paper. “Previously he would usually leave Siem Reap for Thailand for about three or four days, but this time we found that his passport, phone and clothes are still in his guesthouse.”

Added his business partner, Sonny Chhoun, “I think something is wrong. I don’t think he would just leave, with his phone on the charger, and go somewhere else,” the Post reported. “This is very unnatural for Dave. I know him very well.”

The discovery was announced late Monday in a peer-reviewed paper released early by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The laser scanning revealed a previously undocumented formally planned urban landscape integrating the 1,200-year-old temples.

The Angkor temple complex, Cambodia’s top tourist destination and one of Asia’s most famous landmarks, was constructed in the 12th century during the mighty Khmer empire. Angkor Wat is a point of deep pride for Cambodians, appearing on the national flag, and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Archaeologists had long suspected that the city of Mahendraparvata lay hidden beneath a canopy of dense vegetation atop Phnom Kulen mountain in Siem Reap province. But the airborne lasers produced the first detailed map of a vast cityscape, including highways and previously undiscovered temples.

“No one had ever mapped the city in any kind of detail before, and so it was a real revelation to see the city revealed in such clarity,” University of Sydney archaeologist Damian Evans, the study’s lead author, said by phone from Cambodia. “It’s really remarkable to see these traces of human activity still inscribed into the forest floor many, many centuries after the city ceased to function and was overgrown.”

The laser technology, known as LiDAR, works by firing laser pulses from an aircraft to the ground and measuring the distance to create a detailed, three-dimensional map of the area. It’s a useful tool for archaeologists because the lasers can penetrate thick vegetation and cover swaths of ground far faster than they could be analyzed on foot. LiDAR has been used to explore other archaeological sites, such as Stonehenge.

In April 2012, researchers loaded the equipment onto a helicopter, which spent days crisscrossing the dense forests from 800 metres above the ground. A team of Australian and French archaeologists then confirmed the findings with an on-foot expedition through the jungle.

Archaeologists had already spent years doing ground research to map a 9-square-kilometre section of the city’s downtown area. But the lidar revealed the downtown was much more expansive — at least 35 square kilometres — and more heavily populated than once believed.

Handout PNAS News The 10th century "ephemeral capital" of Koh Ker. Top: previously identified features in the central
area (19). Bottom: lidar-derived hillshade model of terrain beneath the vegetation from the same angle,
with elevation derived from the lidar digital terrain model at 1m resolution and 2x vertical exaggeration,
showing an array of previously undocumented elements such as ponds, reservoirs and mounds that are
not delimited in space by any form of enclosure. Red denotes a modern road.

“The real revelation is to find that the downtown area is densely inhabited, formally-planned and bigger than previously thought,” Evans said. “To see the extent of things we missed before has completely changed our understanding of how these cities were structured.”

Researchers don’t yet know why the civilization at Mahendraparvata collapsed. But Evans said one current theory is that possible problems with the city’s water management system may have driven people out.

The next step for researchers involves excavating the site, which Evans hopes will reveal clues about how many people once called the city home.

A Canadian retiree has been arrested in Cambodia after police burst into a hotel room and allegedly found a naked child cowering in the bathroom and a man in bed with pornography, sex toys, a camera and erectile enhancement pills.

The 69-year-old man, whose Canadian passport was issued in Vancouver, has been charged with sexually abusing an underaged girl, according to a prominent child’s advocacy group.

Police arrested Vijai Indra Deo Kumar on Monday in Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Wat, the world heritage site of the largest religious monument in the world.

“We followed up on a report from immigration police and when we went to the guesthouse we caught the suspect in his room red-handed,” Lieutenart Colonel Duong Thavary, chief of the provincial anti-human trafficking and children protection office, told the Cambodia Daily.

“We found many obscene discs and medicine to make someone strong during sex,” his deputy, Chea Heng, told the Phnom Penh Post.

This wealthy, elderly retiree left Canada to come to Cambodia to buy child prostitutes. He is now in jail

“This wealthy, elderly retiree left Canada to come to Cambodia to buy child prostitutes. He is now in jail,” said prosecutor Ti Sovanthal.

Mr. Komar traveled from Canada to Laos in March. From there he went to Vietnam before arriving in Cambodia on April 16 and settling into Siem Reap’s Hilton Angkor Guesthouse, according to Action Pour Les Enfants, a child’s rights non-governmental organization. (The guesthouse is not part of the Hilton hotel chain.)

Mr. Komar was scheduled to return to Canada on May 16. He is now in detention pending trial, authorities said.

“This week’s police operations have sent out a strong signal that the times of impunity are over and Cambodia is no longer a safe haven for pedophiles,” Seila Samleang, country director for the child’s rights organization, told the National Post.

The organization is working with police to collect further evidence in the case and is providing social and legal assistance to the 14-year-old girl.

As part of a crackdown against sex tourism in Cambodia, the government has called on hotel employees to report suspicious activity to authorities, acting as their eyes and ears to protect vulnerable children.

Police said the arrest came after it received a tip about Mr. Kumar, but did not specify the source of the information. The tip led police to get a warrant to enter Mr. Kumar’s room.

Local newspapers reported that on a previous visit to the area Mr. Kumar drew attention but was not charged, when police believed he had suspicious contact with a young bookseller.

“It is disgusting that so many Canadians are travelling abroad to sexually exploit vulnerable and defenceless children,” said Rosalind Prober, president of Beyond Borders, a Winnipeg-based organization fighting child sexual exploitation.

Five Canadians have been convicted in Canada for sex tourism since the law was changed to allow prosecution for crimes committed by Canadians abroad in 1997, but Ms. Prober said that represents a tiny fraction of the perpetrators.

Activists in Cambodia say the arrests signal enhanced attention and enforcement rather than an increase in sex tourism. Signs are posted around the country encouraging people to phone a tips line to report suspected sex tourists and predatory pedophiles.

A wildly coloured gecko, a fish that looks like a gherkin, and a monkey with an Elvis-like hairstyle are among the more than 200 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region last year, environmental group WWF said on Monday.

The area’s diversity is so astonishing that a new species is found every two days, but regional cooperation and decision-making must take centre stage to preserve its richness, the group added.

The dangers posed to local wildlife were highlighted earlier this year, when WWF said that Vietnam’s Javan rhinos have been poached into extinction.

“While the 2010 discoveries are new to science, many are already destined for the dinner table, struggling to survive in shrinking habitats and at risk of extinction,” said Stuart Chapman, Conservation Director of WWF Greater Mekong, in a statement.

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Among the new species highlighted in the report “Wild Mekong” is a gecko with bright orange legs, a yellow neck, and a blue-gray body with yellow bars on its bright orange sides, discovered on an island in southern Vietnam.

Then there is a black and white snub-nosed monkey whose head sports an Elvis-like hairstyle, found in Myanmar’s mountainous Kachin state. Locals say the animal can be spotted with its head between its knees in rainy weather as it tries to keep rain from running into its upturned nose.

Other featured creatures among the 208 new finds include a lizard that reproduces via cloning without the need for male lizards, a fish that resembles a gherkin, and five species of carnivorous pitcher plant, some of which lure in and consume rats and even birds.

“Mekong governments have to stop thinking about biodiversity protection as a cost and recognise it as an investment to ensure long-term stability,” Chapman said.

“The region’s treasure trove of biodiversity will be lost if governments fail to invest in the conservation and maintenance of biodiversity, which is so fundamental to ensuring long-term sustainability in the face of global environmental change.”

Despite restrictions, trade in wildlife remains an active threat to a range of endangered animals in the region, with some hunted because body parts — such as rhinoceros horns — are coveted ingredients in traditional Asian medicine.

Others, such as Mekong dolphins, face threats from fishing gear such as gill nets and illegal fishing methods, prompting the WWF in August to warn that one dolphin population in the river was at high risk of extinction.

PHNOM PENH — The Khmer Rouge were not “bad people”, the regime’s highest-ranking surviving member said Monday as Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes tribunal began hearing evidence in a long-awaited atrocities trial.

“Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, seen as the chief ideologue of the brutal 1970s movement, was the first of three accused to face questioning from judges in the proceedings.

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The trial is seen as vital to finding some justice over the country’s “Killing Fields” era when up to two million people died, and hundreds of Cambodians packed the Phnom Penh courtroom to see Nuon Chea in the dock.

“I don’t want the next generations to misunderstand the history. I don’t want them to misunderstand that the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminals. Nothing is true about that,” the bespectacled 85-year-old told the court.

Nuon Chea and his co-defendants — former foreign minister Ieng Sary and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan — all deny charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Led by “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied cities, abolished money and religion and wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population through starvation, overwork or execution in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.

The regime was eventually ousted from the capital by Vietnamese forces.

Nuon Chea cast himself as a nationalist defending his nation from Vietnamese aggressors who “always attempted to swallow Cambodian territory” and blamed the neighbouring country for the many deaths during the Khmer Rouge period.

“It was Vietnam who killed Cambodians,” the unrepentant revolutionary said.

Pol Pot’s right-hand man also pointed the finger at rogue elements, or “bandits”, who had infiltrated the Khmer Rouge before the hardline communist group came to power.

Khmer Rouge survivors at the court were dismissive of Nuon Chea’s version of the past.

“What kind of a patriot is he when millions of people were evacuated from the cities to face suffering?” asked Chum Mey, 80, one of just a handful of people to survive a notorious Khmer Rouge torture prison.

“We are not happy when he says Khmer Rouge were not bad,” he told AFP. “A crocodile must cry when it is tied up. He is only speaking to get his punishment reduced.”

Nuon Chea cooperated well on Monday, giving judges detailed answers about the rise of the communist movement in Cambodia in the 1950s and 1960s, which he said he joined to fight against injustice and oppression.

But the session ended early after the octogenarian complained he was “rather exhausted”. Questioning will resume on Tuesday.

Owing to fears that not all of the ailing accused, who are in their 80s, will live to see a verdict, the court recently split their complex case into a series of smaller trials.

In this first session, it will focus only on the forced movement of the population and related crimes against humanity.

Khieu Samphan is also expected to give evidence in the trial, the court’s second, at some point in the next two weeks. He said in his opening remarks in late November that he was a patriot who was unaware of the mass killings at the time. Ieng Sary has stated that he does not wish to testify.

Absent from the proceedings was fourth co-accused Ieng Thirith — the regime’s “First Lady” and the only female leader to be charged by the court — after she was ruled unfit for trial last month because she has dementia.

In its first trial, the tribunal sentenced Khmer Rouge jailer Duch to 30 years in jail last year for overseeing the deaths of some 15,000 people. An appeal judgment in the case is expected on February.

Battle-hardened former Khmer Rouge guerrilla Lim Sambath echoes the words that have become a mantra for the servants of the ultra-Maoist regime that tore Cambodia apart three decades ago.

“We had to follow orders,” he said of his role in the bloody “year zero” revolution that wiped out 1.7 million Cambodians — a quarter of the population — from 1975-1979, marking one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.

“Almost all Cambodians are victims. Everybody had to follow the regime’s policy,” he said. “Those who defied the rules, their fate was death.”

As a U.N.-backed court prepares for the trial of three senior leaders on Monday, the truth about the “killing fields” could be lost forever in the rugged mountains and impenetrable jungles of this former Khmer Rouge stronghold.

Like “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, ex-President Khieu Samphan and former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, Lim Sambath, 58, distances himself from the killings and says his recollection of the harrowing era is vague.

He tells stories of his battlefield heroics to repel Vietnamese invaders but denies responsibility for any of the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who died of torture, starvation, disease and execution in the rice fields and makeshift jails run by Pol Pot’s black-clad disciples.

“I don’t know how many people were killed,” Lim Sambath, a former guerrilla commander, now a community leader, told Reuters at his home in Boyakha village on the western border with Thailand.

“We had to follow orders. We had little knowledge. We saw no light. It was like living on another planet. But that was the only planet we knew.”

Almost every Cambodian alive lost a family member under the Khmer Rouge and many fear the multi-million dollar Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC), established by the United Nations in 2005 to try those “most responsible” for the killings, will fail to bring justice.

VOW OF SILENCE

Pol Pot, the French-educated architect of the revolution, died in 1998 and the defendants facing trial next week in what is known as “Case 002” not only appear unwilling to cooperate but face widespread criticism for stalling the proceedings.

Ieng Sary, for instance, tried to have his case thrown out and last month issued a statement saying he would refuse to answer questions, or speak at all, during the trial.

Another blow to the proceedings took place on Thursday when a fourth defendant, French-educated former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, was declared mentally ill, unfit for trial. She will be released if no appeal is lodged.

The defendants are charged with committing crimes against humanity and genocide, and accused of crimes ranging from murder to enslavement, religious and political persecution, inhumane treatment and unlawful imprisonment.

They are all in their 80s and in poor health. Given the slow pace at which the joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunal moves, many fear they won’t live to see the verdict delivered.

The court has handed down just one sentence so far, a 35-year jail term, commuted to 19 years, for former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias “Duch”, over the deaths of more than 14,000 people. His appeal is set for February 3 next year. He has repeatedly said he was “just following orders”.

Cambodians who saw Duch sentenced reacted with anger and tears and complained it was too lenient. Many just want the top commanders to come clean and explain the motivation and ideology that fueled the Khmer Rouge’s unrelenting killing spree.

“They’re all guilty,” said Kim Sokhon, a street vendor who lost his mother, sister and two nieces. “They know what happened — they were the ones who enforced Pol Pot’s policies.”

The closest any of the former cadres have come to disclosure is seen in the documentary film “Enemies of the People”, in which Nuon Chea, during six years of interviews with journalist Thet Sambath, admitted threats to the party line were “destroyed” if they could not be “corrected or re-educated”.

For tens of thousands of Cambodians, being “destroyed” meant being blindfolded, then bludgeoned to death and thrown into one of the hundreds of mass graves across the country.

The film is expected to be used as evidence against Nuon Chea, who denies the charges.

Chhang Youk, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has compiled evidence to use during the trial, said it was unlikely defendants would confess but he was confident justice would eventually prevail.

“Everyone wants a final judgment of what happened,” he said. “We’ve seen the Khmer Rouge hasn’t changed its attitude. They won’t admit anything, so the tribunal is really important.”

CREDIBILITY CRISIS

The ECCC itself is in crisis. Despite its big budget, expected to reach $150 million by year-end, it is beset by resignations and public acrimony over its reluctance to pursue cases beyond 002.

It also faces allegations of U.N. apathy and political interference by members of the Cambodian government, some of whom are former Khmer Rouge cadres.

Theary Seng, a prominent survivor of the Khmer Rouge era and the first plaintiff to register in case 002, withdrew her complaint against Nuon Chea on Tuesday because of what she called “toxic shenanigans” in the court.

Her letter to the ECCC, typed in a large, bold font, said simply: “ENOUGH!”

That same day, the Open Society Justice Initiative, a private legal and human rights group, urged the United Nations to conduct an independent inquiry into allegations of judicial misconduct, incompetence and lack of independence, accusing Cambodian and international judges of thwarting investigations.

Tribunal monitor Clair Duffy said the ECCC now had a “credibility crisis” and it was crucial more indictments were made so the real story of the Khmer Rogue was not left untold.

“We know these institutions cannot prosecute everyone … but we also know that 1.7 million people were not tortured, starved, enslaved and executed by one torture center commander and up to a handful of people at the top,” she said.

Independent experts say a big problem is the politicization of cases and stonewalling by Cambodia’s government to limit the scope of investigations.

Many former Khmer Rouge members hold top positions in the bureaucracy, legislature and the government, including parliament president Heng Samrin, Finance Minister Keat Chhon, and long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Hun Sen last year told U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that more indictments were “not allowed” and has previously said he would be happy if the court packed up and left, warning of a return to civil war if more cases were pursued.

Ven Dara, a provincial councilor in Palin and niece of a late Khmer Rouge military chief, Ta Mok, admitted she was horrified by the killings and said indictments should go to the very top.

“If the Khmer Rouge leaders are accused of being the killers, then what about our current leaders? They didn’t even dare to show up to testify,” she told Reuters.

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The Nazi leader had been living in the Führerbunker — eight metres beneath the garden of the old Reich Chancellery in Berlin — since January, 1945. He was joined by his senior staff, medical and administrative staff and the bunker was stocked with large quantities of food and other necessities. Hitler married Eva Braun in the bunker; both later committed suicide by ingesting cyanide. Their bodies were dragged out of the bunker’s emergency exit and set on fire. Hitler’s Italian ally Benito Mussolini also met a sorry end: He was executed and then hung upside down in a public square in Milan.

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The Khmer Rouge leader, better known as Pol Pot, was responsible for the deaths of two million people. He had been confined to a hut in northern Cambodia after he was ousted by the Khmer Rouge put on house arrest. The report of his death came only days after the United States had talked to China about establishing a tribunal to try him for crimes against humanity. An autopsy performed by Thai military officials suggested he died from a heart attack, but the Cambodian government suspected he committed suicide or was poisoned.

Radovan KaradzicArrested July 2008

The Bosnian Serb war criminal was a fugitive at large for 13 years. When arrested in Belgrade, he was posing as a doctor of alternative medicine using the alias Dragan Dabic. He was unrecognizable because of his long white beard, flowing hair and glasses.

Saddam HusseinArrested December 2003

The former Iraqi president was found in a tiny cellar at a farmhouse about 15 kilometres from his hometown Tikrit. The hut had two very small rooms, a bedroom cluttered with clothes and a kitchen with running water. Upon arrest, he appeared disheveled, but medical tests determined he was in good health. About 600 U.S. troops blocked off a two kilometre-by-two-kilometre perimeter around the rural farmhouse in al-Dawr. They found a narrow hole covered with a rug, bricks, and dirt. Saddam was armed with a pistol, but he offered no resistance.

Laurent GbagboArrested April 2011

The formal president of the Cote d’Ivoire refused for four months to step down after losing the 2010 presidential elections, and his militiamen guarded his residence in the capital Abidjan with heavy weapons. Eventually, the combined efforts of forces loyal to the country’s elected president, Alassane Ouattara, French troops and United Nations peacekeepers cornered Mr. Gbagbo. The first thing he said? “Don’t kill me.”

The commander-in-chief of the Kangleipak Communist Party in India, who escaped from prison by digging a tunnel, was found in an underground bunker two feet and a half deep. Meitei occasionally left his bunker, which led to police discovering his whereabouts. His lair lay below a plank of wood covered by carpet under a bed, under the house of a retired police constable. Meitei was shot when he fired at an officer.

Francesco PesceArrested August 2011

The Italian mafia leader, accused of drug dealing, money laundering and criminal association, was arrested in an underground bunker concealed beneath a junkyard. The 40-square-metre bunker in a Calabrian town was air-conditioned, with bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, plus TV, web access and a video surveillance system. The hideout was accessed through a metre-high concealed trap door next to a chicken coop. Pesce gave himself over to the police when they began demolishing the site looking for him.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/a-history-of-tyrants-terrorists-and-thugs-going-underground/feed0stdA journalist looks climbs out of the spider hole in which Saddam Hussein was hiding when he was captured by U.S. troops in 2003.Photos of the Day, Oct. 10, 2011http://news.nationalpost.com/photos/photos-of-the-day-oct-10-2011
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Today’s best photos from around the world selected by the Photo Editors of the National Post

Majid Saeedi/Getty ImagesA National Transitional Council (NTC) fighter fires an RPG during a street battle in the 700 complex area of "Emarat" against Muammar Gaddafi's troops on October 8, 2011 in Sirte, Libya. NTC fighters say this is the final assault on Muammar Gaddafi's home town as they capture the main hospital, University and the Ouagadougou conference centre in the city.

MUSTAFA OZER/AFP/Getty ImagesTurkish photojournalist Goksin Sipahioglu's coffin is carried by his friends and fellow photojournalist during his funeral ceremony in Istanbul on October 10, 2011. Goksin Sipahioglu, photojournalist and founder of the renowned Paris-based photo agency Sipa, died last week, at the age of 84 in Paris, France.

REUTERS/Raheb HomavandiA woman enters a cave, made by Iranian artist Naser Hooshmand Vaziri in Lavasan, northern Tehran October 10, 2011. Vaziri has created a sculpture garden using recycled materials in an open-air museum, which attracts hundreds of Iranians on a weekly basis.

REUTERS/Pascal RossignolPeople watch as a diver with the French fire brigade rescues a cow that was trapped in a river after it slipped from its banks in Salome, northern France, October 10, 2011. A team of divers and fire fighters worked for several hours to rescue the cow from the river and get it safely onto land.

REUTERS/Tony GentileZsuzsanna Krajnyak of Hungary (L) and Wu Bai Li of China compete during their final in the wheelchair sabre competition at the World Fencing Championships in Catania October 10, 2011. Krajnyak won 15-8.

REUTERS/Pichi ChuangParticipants in colour-coordinated outfits form the "double ten" symbol, which is a combination of the Chinese character "10", during Taiwan's National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei October 10, 2011. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China.

REUTERS/Naseer AhmedA man is framed through an aluminium roll as he cuts a sheet to make shutters for shops, at a workshop in Quetta on October 10, 2011.

REUTERS/BeawihartaA scavenger smoke a cigarette during take a break as he collects plastic and paper for recycle at Bantar Gebang main garbage dump in Bekasi district, on the outskirt of Jakarta October 10, 2011. Around 830 trucks collect garbage in Jakarta, which amount to about 6,000 ton per day, and send it to the main garbage dump in Bantar Gebang, according to the Jakarta Sanitation Agency spokesman.

REUTERS/Samrang PringA girl sits in a bucket as her sister pushes it through flood waters on a street in Kandal province October 10, 2011. Floodings have killed 207 people in Cambodia, a biggest hit by flooding in a decade while more than 100,000 hectares of rice paddies had been damaged, Cambodian National Disaster Management Committee (CNDMC) announced on Monday. The CNDM said a total of 300,000 hectares of rice paddies were under water and the floodings have displaced more than 300,000 families.

PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/Getty ImagesThai villagers paddle a boat past a giant "leaning" Buddha statue as floodwaters inundate an ancient temple in Ayutthaya province, north of the capital Bangkok, on October 10, 2011. More than 250 Thais have died after two months of heavy rainfall have inundated large swathes of the country and hit provinces on the northern outskirts of the capital particularly hard.

Paula Bronstein /Getty ImagesThai girls sits in the water while eating as floods continue to cause havoc October 10, 2011 in Ayutthaya, Thailand. Around 200 factories closed in the central Thai province of Ayutthaya because of flooding, which is posing a threat to Bangkok as well. Over 260 people have died in flood-related incidents since late July according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation. Some areas of the country are experiencing the worst flooding in 50 years, mainly in the centre, north and northeast.

ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty ImagesAn Afghan vendor holds up stuffed toys as he tries to sell to customers at an outdoor market in Kabul on October 10, 2011. During the Taliban era dolls are banned regarding to idolatry is forbidden. Despite massive injection of foreign aid since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan remains desperately poor with some of the lowest living standands in the world.

Dan Istitene/Getty ImagesA red deer stag bellows in woodland after sunrise during the autumn rut at Richmond Park on October 10, 2011 in London, England. Autumn sees the start of the 'Rutting' season where the stags and bucks bellow in an attempt to attract females.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/photos/photos-of-the-day-oct-10-2011/feed3galleryAutumn Deer Rut In Richmond ParkInterim Authority Forces Target Sirte-A woman enters a cave, made by Iranian artist Naser Hooshmand Vaziri in LavasanA diver with the French fire brigade rescues a cow that was trapped in a river in Salome, northern FranceKrajnyak of Hungary and Wu of China compete during their final in the wheelchair sabre competition at the World Fencing Championships in CataniaParticipants form the double ten symbol during Taiwan's National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office in TaipeiA man is framed through an aluminium roll as he cuts a sheet to make shutters for shops, at a workshop in QuettaA scavenger smoke a cigarette during take a break as he collects plastic and paper for recycle at Bantar Gebang main garbage dump in Bekasi districtA girl sits in a bucket as her sister pushes it through flood waters on a street in Kandal provincejeffisgr8t-7110324Floods Continue To Ravage Parts Of Thailandjeffisgr8t111931Autumn Deer Rut In Richmond Park